When they talk of Chinese mountain-and-river painting, modern people often equate it with Chinese ink wash painting, naturally ignoring Chinese bluish green mountain-and-river painting. In fact, there is a saying in Chinese painting circle all the time: “Color painting comes before ink painting .”
We can say bluish green mountain-and-river painting is the most traditional and most authentic form of Chinese painting. After the flourish in Tang dynasty, it declined gradually. After the Five Dynasties, under the impact of the tides of ink wash landscape painting and literati painting, it retreated from the dominant position in the painting circle. Although it reached another peak in Southern Song dynasty, it can not continue in Yuan and Ming dynasties. Since Qing dynasty it even never rose again. Till modern times, national people have been tired of fast urban life and start to heartedly yearn for returning to nature and simplicity. More and more people calm down and start to realized the value of the quintessence of various Chinese cultures. A trend of restoring classics quietly emerges . Bluish green mountain-and-river painting which is in crisis is also included. The good news is that a group of young talented artists emerge in such situation , under the guidance of the old-generation artists like Zhang Daqian, He Haixia and Yang Qiyu, and create a lot of splendid bluish green mountain-and-river paintings . Fujian artist Deng Shaobing is one of these emerging young talented artists.
Deng Shaobing was born in a village in western Fujian. The natural green mountains and rivers in his homeland were the first mountain-and-river picture he ever saw. Then he naturally loved bluish green mountain-and-river painting. However, his determination of pursuing bluish green mountain-and-river painting for lifetime should be attributed to his access to the bluish green mountain-and-river paintings of the masters in all ages at school.
Only after taking this path, he started to concern relevant information and realized companions were very few. Soon later he became excited when he saw the mountain-and-river paintings of previous masters. He was fascinated by the vigorous affection, the magnificent full-view composition and the solemn and elegant air generated from its fabulous color application in the bluish green mountain-and-river paintings of previous masters. However, he was confused about why the glories of bluish green mountain-and-river painting in the history did not sustain and how come it declined so badly. Why it was not inherited and better promoted… He felt regretted for it. Then he determined to do something to change the status quo, for the sake of his love for bluish green mountain-and-river painting and his responsibility as a Chinese national to promote Chinese culture.
As early as his school days, Deng Shaobing has formed his art view of “learning from ancients and the Nature”. he believes the tradition will never be outdated. He has always kept absorbing nourishment from ancients, to study their depiction and presentation of mountain , stone, grass, tree, spring, cloud, figure and building. Contemporary artists’ exploration of the tradition is far from enough. However, Deng Shaobing also knows very well that blind imitation of ancients is far from “creation”. To break away from the constraint of ancients and form his own style, he also needs to learn from the Nature. He has traveled many great mountains and rivers to get nutrients and inspirations from the Nature. He was often moved by the profoundness and vigorousness of great mountains . At the age of 40, he even took “He Yun”(literally means cloud in great mountains) as his pen name to express his love and yearning for the Great Nature.
Years before, he used to travel to Zhang Jiajie for sketching. He was overwhelmed by the primitive, grotesque and beautiful natural sceneries there; especially the horizontal stretches of layers of laminated rock gave him an impulsion and inspiration for creation. After he returned from Zhang Jiajie, he had kept thinking about how to enrich traditional bluish green mountain-and-river painting in real mountains and rivers, how to paint the modern cities where we are living in and how to find a conjunction point between traditional bluish green mountain-and-river painting and modern aesthetic request. Bearing these questions in mind, he studied and tested repeatedly in his painting room on how to get rid of the standardized and single model of traditional bluish green mountain-and-river painting and better express the inner world of artists by giving colors a more wide, profound and delicate space. During that period, he created works like Cloudy Mountain and Stream, Cloudy Mountain And River in Spring and Pines In The Cloudy Mountain. Especially in his Pines In The Cloudy Mountain, he endows the whole painting with an easy, ethereal, vibrant and naïve air and avoids the disadvantage of stiffness, rigidity and dullness of traditional technique by overlaying of azurite blue and malachite green on horizontal lines of layers of laminated rock. The contract of figurative and abstract techniques imperceptibly enhances the visual impact of the painting. Another success of the painting is that it breaks “three remotes” in traditional bluish green mountain-and-river painting by abandoning traditional layout of clouds and rivers and applying barrier composition through overlaying of ink and colors to enrich the simple composition and present the layering, vibrant and modern senses of the painting in a plane. Thus, it not only keeps its magnificence and gorgeousness but also adds refreshing, spacious and elegant feelings. This innovative try was also successfully applied in his subsequent urban paintings like Sky Outside Window.
Today, pure restoration of ancient art is meaningless while blind creation will also lead an artist to a wrong way. Only going deep into the tradition and exploring the eternal value of traditional culture and classical beauty and integrating it with modern “context” and the inner world and emotional changes of modern people to develop and improve classical painting forms is a right way for art exploration. Deng Shaobing is an artist who has his own art view and pursuit. He respects the tradition yet does not bind himself to the tradition. He stress innovation yet does not seek for distinction blindly. He is also a responsible artist. He said, “A important thing is to be responsible, for yourself, for others , for society and for history.” We believe he can create works of his own style and leave his footprints on the path of bluish green mountain-and-river painting.